Reverse Engineering a Cat Feeder to Boost Productivity

I was just looking into this the other day. Nice to see someone do it. I wonder if making it more hackable by replacing the electronic guts with something like a ESP8266 would be worthwhile. I&#x27;d much rather be able to have a simple little server on this device that I can talk to over the network rather than having to go through some random company&#x27;s servers. I imagine connecting it to the motor that turns the feeding mechanism wouldn&#x27;t be too hard and the screen and buttons could simply be removed to prevent any, ahem, manual tampering. Adding some way to lock the food bin would also help with impulse control for those who need it.<p>Another upgrade would be to randomly reward the desired behavior instead of always rewarding it. This helps to both prevent gaming the system as well as keeping those dopamine spikes high when you unexpectedly get some candy. Using chocolate as a reward is perfect since it provides tryamine to help replenish your dopamine levels.

Just connect the reward to a good build and passing all the unit tests. Project management achieved. :)

Someone somewhere will steal the idea and make these available to human farms (euphemistically known as offices).

SNL really went downhill once they stopped using this effective productivity boosting technique, because Lorne was just too stingy.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_qIcYkEIVdc&amp;t=3m23s" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_qIcYkEIVdc&amp;t=3m23s</a>

Fun hack. Though, for myself, I&#x27;d be afraid of breaking either my diet or my normal goal-directed work focus.

I was scratching my head on how he was capturing requests without mentioning a proxy cert, but then I saw the security note at the bottom.<p><pre><code> You&#x27;ll see that the data for these products is sent in plaintext to and from their servers </code></pre> The API seems to have a valid cert and is listening over HTTPS - strange that the app client uses plaintext.<p><pre><code> curl https:&#x2F;&#x2F;api.petkt.com&#x2F; {&quot;error&quot;:{&quot;code&quot;:97,&quot;msg&quot;:&quot;App is out of date, please upgrade&quot;}}</code></pre>

I was actually just thinking about a Tamagotchi-like program that required regular productive activities in order to keep a virtual pet alive, healthy and happy. A computer program would not need to deal with all that messy real world hardware; it would all be virtual.<p>You could also add a function that makes your virtual pet unhappy if you spent too much time reading Hacker News. Instant productivity boost.

By mixing the chocolate almonds with a larger amount of less desirable snacks, one could get the lootbox effect of “just one more commit”.

<i>Reverse Engineering the Reverse Engineered Cat Feeder to Boost Snacks</i><p>while true: push

The tricky bit is trying to outwit yourself.<p>Just opening the lid and delving in.

Tangent to the project: Nuts are good, but what about a healthier mix?<p>Like wasabi covered almonds if you like almonds, or sunflower seeds (for trace minerals), walnuts, etc.<p>They are high in carbs but provide many other things.<p>On the tech side, it would be fun to be able to deliver just one for a lootbox effect (&quot;when I get the walnut, I take a break&quot;)<p>It could also be at specified intervals, to act like a pomodoro?

That wouldn&#x27;t work for me. Too hackable.<p>I need at least something like this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thekitchensafe.com&#x2F;pages&#x2F;faq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thekitchensafe.com&#x2F;pages&#x2F;faq</a>

&gt; They send your complete location too, which is further sketchy<p>Why do they need your location in the first place? Can you run the app without GPS priviliges?

I&#x27;d game this immediately: commit every character individually.

why would you extend so much energy to eat more unhealthy junk?